Carbide tooling - Roughers vs finishers

[jerseyTom]

This may be an interesting opinion question.

At a previous job we used to cut extensive amounts of aluminum and plastics.. Using carbide finishing end mills on a 7500rpm machine (1) we often ran out of spindle speed before reaching a limit to how fast we could push the tools (2) the tooling would last almost indefinitely. Was no reason to even look into roughing end mills.

Recently I've had to run a fair amount of steel (primarily 1018 and O1) on a 10,000rpm 40taper machine, that admittedly isn't the most rigid thing in the world.

Is a rougher or semi-rougher end mill in carbide going to offer a significant advantage versus a good finishing end mill, for hogging out large amounts of material? Can you run that much more FPT? Do they last longer or any more resistant to chipping? Or is a good carbide "finishing" end mill going to be just as good?

[BobWarfield]

The rougher is tougher, but you still have to see whether it matters to your machine and to the particular job at hand.

One thing that might matter--the rougher will be less likely to chatter. If you get a job that chatters, give it the rougher. It also makes smaller chips (the serrations break 'em up more), which may be helpful when chip clearing small pockets or deep holes.

Cheers,

BW

[justin@micorind]

A good variable helix endmill will do a much better job roughing material over your standard finisher. Some good but less expensive endmills that work good with 1018 are the Guhring series 3113 and 3114, also the YG vpower series. I use both of these endmills everyday on haas minimills which are not so rigid and they do a good job